Technology: It’s FANtastic!
Today my wife and I went shopping for a used van — such are the necessities of a two-kid family. My two door Civic wasn’t really cutting it anymore when I was trying to navigate babies and car seats to the cramped back of it. So with tearfully fond memories of a car I’ve had since 2003, we rode off to a few dealerships to hunt down a deal.
I won’t bore you with the details (we finally purchased a 2009 Mazda5, which could only graciously be called a “van-like” station wagon, but it’ll suit our needs just fine), although we were plenty bored. I don’t know if you’ve been car shopping before, but if you haven’t, you need to be prepared for the huge stretches of nothing that happens. Every time I’ve gone shopping for a vehicle, I’ve ended up sitting in a car dealership for the better part of a day (five hours today), of which stuff happens only a little bit of the time. The salespeople like to make you wait so that you’ll get antsy and agree to the price, so they frequently leave to go to their sales manager’s office — which is apparently in a different hemisphere, requiring an arduous travel schedule — with our offers and counter-offers. Then, when you agree on a price, you end up sitting there while the forms are printed, forms which I estimate started their life as trees on the same day, trees which were chopped down on commission by the salesman, pulped behind the dealership, made into thin sheets of paper, and finally brought to a printer.
If I lost you in that chunky paragraph, here’s the TL;DR version: we ended up sitting in an empty cubicle for hours on end, completely bored. It’s here where technology comes to the rescue.
As much as I try not to be ADD, I really have a hard time doing *nothing*. I spend a good amount of my waking hours connected to the internet and media and gadgets and entertainment, so when you ask me to just sit and not give me something to do (like meetings), I go nuts. My wife left after we agreed on a sales price, so I braved out the remaining few hours with the help of my trusty iPhone.
Seriously, this is when the iPhone transforms from a trusty, helpful gadget to a minor-league superhero. With the internet, movies, Kindle, games, Twitter, blog posts, news and day planner at my fingertips, I could outlast the best of them. You never know when you’re going to suddenly be stranded in a holding pattern with nothing to do — like if you go to the post office and there’s a 30 minute line, or if you go to pick up someone at the airport, someone who told you their flight was coming in at 5:00pm but they didn’t come out the doors until 6:45 (not that that ever happened to me). I feel a little more secure that if any of those occasions pop up, I’ve got a literal library of books in my pocket. It’s really neat, and why I’m probably not resisting the technology revolution as much as my foreboding sense of doom tells me I should.
- Posted in: iPhone
“I’ve got a literal library of books in my pocket”
Usually I’m carrying a *real* book with me – problem solved =)
Although I’ve yet to get an iPhone or a touch I can’t wait to discover the convenience that you have.
I wanted to make note on your experience of buying a car. Like you I don’t like sitting in a dealership all day, so to circumvent that I do several things to make buying a new vehicle tolerable.
First thing that I do is get pre-approved at a bank and with the manufacturers financial services. You usually get a far better APR with the manufacturer services. A bank once offered me 5.8% while the manufacture offered 1.7%. When you’re pre-approved it empowers you knowing that you can afford to buy a vehicle if you choose to.
Know the value of your trade-in. Go to edmunds.com, nada.com, and kbb.com. Be honest on evaluating the worth of your vehicle. This helps, particularly if you discover that if you still have a loan whether you’re upside-down or not on your loan. It also gives you knowledge on what your vehicle is worth and you can aggressively negotiate on trade in value. Once I had a vehicle that I owed $8200 on and the initial trade in offer was $6k. My resale value was about $11k, so I held off and got them to agree to $7900 (my payment was due in a week, so I’d have broken even).
Research the hell out of the models that you’re interested in. Know about every trim, what’s standard and optional. Know everything about your vehicle in the sense that you yourself are a salesman and you’re studying the car that you’re going to sell to a client. Most importantly, know what the invoice price on the model vehicle is. In some cases I’ve found invoice to be 11% less than MSRP, but that is based on the models that I was looking at so I don’t know how accurate that is. You can find invoice price on the above mentioned websites on vehicle appraisal. Knowing invoice gives you that ability to negotiate down what the dealer is asking for. It’s a great feeling when you get to an agreed upon price that’s lower than the sticker price.
I’ve saved the best tip for last because this one will save you time and money. After you’ve identified the model vehicle that you’re interested in, DO NOT SET FOOT IN A DEALERSHIP! Instead go online to the manufacturer’s website, check out the model that you’re interested in, look for the link that allows them to contact you because you’re interested (you’ll have to input your zip code). After doing so just take a break. That same day or within a few days you’ll be contact via email (usually). It’s a fleet salesman from the local dealership. Unlike his fellow dealership salesmen co-workers he does not work on commission to sell vehicles. He’s the internet representative for his dealership and it’s his job to move inventory. Once you’re in touch with this person they are usually far easier to work with than a salesman and not pushy at all. Most times you can just communicate through email until things get more serious and then you get on the phone. By then though most of what you’ve agreed upon has been ironed out. Believe me, once you experience how simple and easy this is you’ll never want to go back to a dealership and interact with some sleazy salesman again. I can’t guarantee that this is true all the time, but so far it has been for me.
Hopefully this has been helpful for you or some of your readers.
I know exactly what you mean about not being able to sit still and I’m constantly whipping out my iPhone as soon as my wife starts looking at clothes in a shop, takes a break from talking to chew her meal or yawns. I actually worry about it sometimes because I wonder if my brain is wired too much to constantly need stimulus and that I just can’t switch off and be at peace with myself. Kinda scary…
I want one, but I can’t afford it
Or rather, I can, but I hate spending money. But I like having things. See why I hate shopping? 
Also, I’m the unenviable position of having extreme motion sickness if I’m not looking at what’s going at all times. Want to read on a long train journey? We’ll see how much you do when you have to get off 3 stops early because you’re about to be sick. Long car journey? Suck it up, you’re gonna be staring at a lot of trees and fields all day.
Even worse, when I’m sitting still somewhere other than home (apart from at a restaurant, oddly) I can never concentrate. I have all the Terry Pratchett books, which handily fit into a suit pocket nicely, but if I try and read them anywhere I always find something that I could look at, so I ended up reading the entire series at home rather than in the many hours each week doing bugger all.
But I’m happy you get something out of your iPhone…I’m just a bit envious
I feel exactly the same way. I am so much more patient out in the world these days. It also is incredible to be able to hand it to my 4 year old to tide her over while waiting somewhere.
I have a friend who was worried that having a smartphone meant being tethered to technology, like a ball & chain. She didn’t have the same hesitation with her laptop because well it wasn’t with her always in every situation. When she first got her iPhone she thought her fears were confirmed, she wouldn’t put it down and told me she would become a slave to it. That didn’t happen of course, now over a year later and it’s clear the phone is a great tool & toy and she is definitely its master.
Seeing how people are with their Blackberrys, iPhones and Androids, it’s easy to think these things are leading some people by a leash, but I think that’s an illusion. It’s just like those old assumptions of computer users being anti-social geeks in their basements.
The reality is these devices are enablers on the most positive way. Information and communication. The term Smartphone is very apt IMHO.
Love the Kindle app for the iPhone. Especially love the syncing of where I am in a book so that whatever device I pick up to read the book on it is synced.